Get Your Commercial Out of My Residential.

(c) Celine Sparks, 2023

We don’t have cable. Or Netflix. Or Hulu. We don’t get the game show channel or the history channel or the Your-House-Looks-Awful-So-Why-Don’t-We-Fix-That channel. We’re cheap, so we watch regular TV, like with an antenna. So we get Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies, the news, and Wheel of Fortune. It’s a pretty good line-up, but man, the commercials are the worst.

What happened to decent American commercials about cereal and corn chips and tuna named Charlie? All I see are real people who haven’t bought life insurance yet, or else it's someone who fell down the stairs, and their children are talking to them about burial insurance. Oh yeah, and the ones trying to get you to sue someone whether you’re dead or alive.

Did you pay attention to that? The commercial literally said, “If you developed an injury, illness, or died –” Stop right there. If you died and you are watching a commercial in real time on TV, forget about the legal settlement. You’re set. I think you’re gonna have a lot of dollars thrown at you in a hurry to tell your story and learn your secret.

Also, if you file the claim for being at Le July or Le August or Frere Jacques, and everyone else files the claim, do you realize how much you’re going to get from this settlement? Enough for Le Cheeseburger.

I don’t really know if I was there or not; I don’t really know if I used a certain body product or not; I don’t really know if I was exposed to a certain bug spray or not. I only know that I’ve heard so much about it, that by now, I feel like I was.

I’m certainly not making fun of any kind of adversity. I’m not making fun of the burial insurance either. I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. I just think the actors in the commercials read the script like they’re already dead. So hey, maybe they need to answer that ad that says, “If you died … “ But the more they say, “I should have called yesterday,” the more I’m pretty sure I should’ve changed this channel the day before yesterday. I’m saying words like Paraquat and Mesothelioma in my sleep.

But I mean, anything’s better than that commercial where that crazy, incensed woman is yelling, “Allen! We need to buy supplemental insurance! I told you the Johnsons have it, and they’ve saved enough money to get a reverse mortgage discreet catheter walk-in tub.” Allen is apparently an idiot with hearing loss. And I think his wife may need to hurry up on that burial insurance, too, if she doesn’t stop yelling at Allen.

And I’m a little worried about some of the top-ranking stars from my childhood. What happened? How did the richest, coolest, best-looking men on the planet suddenly turn into sweatered old guys walking around in a park needing to get some extra income? You used to be cool. How did you go through all that money? Tip: Auction off some of your personal stuff from the show. I’ll even bid on it. You’ll make a ton more than they’re giving you for that commercial, surely.

And I’m even more concerned about the woman who is getting packages delivered discreetly to her in plain brown boxes, so no one knows about her problem. Um … you do realize you’re on national TV, right? No one knew until NOW!!!

Oh well, as long as we’re living and breathing, I reckon these annoying commercials are going to come on. And the minute we stop living and breathing, we’ll wish we would’ve called that 1-800 number sooner.